[TOURNAMENT-HotA] BLITZ-JEBUS CROSS

I won't keep my "top list" a secret. If anyone is interested, here is my list of starting preferences specifically when playing HotA Jebus Cross on a short timer (in descending order of strength):

1. Fortress - Dragon
2. Castle - Valeska
3. Cove - Cassiopeia
4. Dungeon - Shakti
5. Necropolis - several roughly equivalent heroes (and even then Necropolis only made it into top-5 because of the possibility of upgrading Vampires).

p.s. Tyraxor and Monere, who are definitely in the top-5 on a long timer, do not make the cut here.

If you're strictly going by the short timer, then Necropolis and Cove clearly don't belong here, and besides, Cove heroes level up very awkwardly; plus Cassiopeia after the Nymph nerf looks much weaker than, say, Jeremy, though I'll reiterate that both level up quite awkwardly. Necropolis simply doesn't fit well into the concept of HotA Jebus Cross, for fairly obvious reasons.
As for Dungeon, a couple of surprises await, besides the Troglodyte nerf — I can give you a little teaser: generate a Jebus Cross on HotA and see what value Dragon Utopias have now compared to Skeleton Transformers; you'll be surprised.
Castle — well, it is what it is; there are probably enough fans to do some curb-stomping with Archers, but you should most likely be prepared that in 50% of cases you'll have to do it with 2-3 Archers... because there are far more objects now, and consequently the chance for Griffin Conservatories is lower.
And of course, +/- 12 guaranteed Grand Elves (with a below-average draw), a bunch of Dwarves under Hives/Conservatories/Towers, good old Kyrre — none of this helps tempo and requires phenomenal micro, just like +/- 17 Air Elementals from the start with Monere at the helm.